When an electric superhero goes vampire: Infamous: Festival of Blood for PS3

Infamous: Festival of Blood is a short, downloadable, standalone game that …

We're used to television shows that have one-off, holiday-inspired specials. Infamous: Festival of Blood applies this same concept to games. It's a somewhat goofy, somewhat dark $10 standalone tale that imagines what would happen if Infamous 2's New Orleans-inspired setting became infested with vampires. And, more importantly, what would happen if its electrically charged protagonist became a vampire.

If the premise sounds a little ridiculous, that's probably because of its origin. The game begins with Zeke—series protagonist Cole's loud-mouthed buddy—trying to pick up a woman in a bar. So he tells her a story. The story of how Cole once took on the legendary Bloody Mary and her vampire hordes. Considering the source, it's no wonder just how goofy the whole thing feels.

All you really need to know is this: Bloody Mary has turned Cole into a vampire, and he has until sunset to defeat her and turn himself back. So the next eight hours of in-game time—which translate into three or four hours of real-world time, maybe more if you do some extra exploration—are spent killing lots of vampires and tracking down ancient weapons. You'll be able to explore a decent-size chunk of the city, which has been overtaken by a strange Halloween-meets-Mardi Gras festival that makes it easy for a guy with blood all over his face and shirt to blend in.

Infamous: Festival of Blood

The gameplay is essentially the same as in the full game. Cole still has his old electric powers and the ability to scramble up buildings, but he's also got a few new vampire-inspired skills. Chief among them is the ability to suck blood from people to regain health. He also has a special vampire vision ripped straight out of Batman: Arkham Asylum that lets him see special symbols on walls or vampires masquerading as humans, and he can quickly fly about town as a swarm of bats, though this controls somewhat awkwardly.

The biggest change in this short adventure, though, is with its morality. There really isn't any. Whereas the main games put a strong focus on whether or not you perform morally good or bad actions, changing Cole's appearance and abilities depending on your choices, in Festival of Blood there are no real consequences. You can suck as much blood from as many innocent citizens as you like without having to worry about it. It's refreshing, in a way, as you are free to simply do whatever you like.

Infamous is already kind of silly to begin with, and Festival of Blood just takes it a step further. Not only are you a guy who can use electricity to toss grenades, ride on train tracks, and float through the sky, but now you can suck blood and turn into a swarm of bats while you fight giant walking bat monsters and teleporting vampires armed with machine guns. It's also, refreshingly, an open world game that you don't need to spend dozens of hours on. You can still run around and climb buildings and collect things, there's just not as much need. It's short but satisfying, and a fun way to revisit the world of Infamous.

This is awesome that they did this…I can’t wait to get home and open this sucker up, see how Cole fares as a Vampire. Love how companies like PS are getting more in tune with gamers and releasing little one-shots like this (provided they are playable, of course).

Have you been able to try out the Move controls yet? If highly recommend it. I'm not a fan of the Move for first person shooters, it just never feels as natural as people claim it to be. But here it works wonderfully, 3rd person games are the way to go.

Does the Move functionality work in Infamous 2 as well, or just this add on/DLC?

It's coming. It's apparently nothing special though, you can aim with a Move controller which sounded kind of mundane to me. Plus I wonder how easy Cole is to use without analog controllers (or does it use one glowing knob and the dualshock in the other hand or something? I'm confused on that).

I was hoping it'd be released at the same time, but I tried last night and there was no update available yet. I kind of wonder if this DLC is a testing ground for Move in the full game.

On the DLC vs Standalone thing, I remember for Infamous the developers talked about how it was impossible for them to add any DLC, the game was never built to support it and there was no way to shoehorn it in. It's possible the same happened with this, or there were other issues, so they just made it a standalone game.

Too bad this is a stand alone title. Would be cool if it was normal DLC. Run around the city as a vamp would be much fun...also maybe even play into more dlc as you work to find a cure...if you want to.

Infamous 2 is defiantly one of the best games I have ever played. Those of you asking if it's good, it's good. It is a bit short but there is a few extras to help get a few hours out of it. I don't know if I would say the story is better, but the gameplay is miles ahead of the original.

1) loved just clambering up buildings and skating along powerlines in Infamous, and2) hasn't gotten around to picking up Infamous 2,

this game offers an incredible amount of fun for $10 bucks. The gameplay's just as enjoyable as the full games, they give you an amazing amount of space to run around in for your money, and the "vampirization" of the same essential gameplay is goofy fun. I think I'm only halfway through the main storyline (I've spent more time just picking up blast shards canopic jars and cannonballing in on bunches of randomly-spawning vampires), but I've already gotten way more than $10 worth of entertainment.

And while I've been a big fan of the animated-comics approach the Infamous games have taken to their cut scenes, the art direction on some of the cut scenes in this DLC is even more stylish than what they did in Infamous 1.